Report: U.S. lawyers want say in German victims fund

Published: Monday, May 03, 1999

BERLIN {AP} U.S. lawyers representing former Nazi-era slave laborers are demanding to be included in negotiations over creating a compensation fund, an idea resisted by German companies, a newspaper said Saturday.

Prompted by lawsuits, 15 of Germany's largest companies have pledged to set up a fund by September to pay reparations to hundreds of thousands of victims forced to work for German firms by the Nazis during World War II.

In return, as part of an overall settlement, the German government has been negotiating with U.S. officials and Jewish organizations for an accord to drop lawsuits against German companies and protect them against any new ones being filed.

The Welt am Sonntag said German companies involved in the negotiations fear that bringing in the lawyers representing the victims will slow the process and could make finding a solution more difficult.

Two American lawyers leading a class-action suit by thousands of former slave laborers, Mel Weiss and Michael Hausfeld, met Bodo Hombach, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's chief of staff, on March 9 in Bonn, the paper said.

The lawyers demanded to be included in talks setting the size of the fund and how it will be disbursed, or they would begin a publicity campaign in the United States aimed at damaging the firms' business interests, the Hamburg-based newspaper said.

It said Hausfeld has already sent a letter to U.S. investment banks and the New York Stock Exchange discouraging them from doing business with a number of German firms.